


Ghosts in a Lighthouse

by StormStuff



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (But he absolutely does not call himself a ghost hunter), Abandonment, Cursed Building, Ghosts, Lonely!Martin, M/M, a friend!, ghost hunter Jon, lighthouse au, what's inside it?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29972457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormStuff/pseuds/StormStuff
Summary: It wasn’t too long ago that the lighthouse was occupied, and yet no one can remember the names of the two men living there. But there were two men, everyone remembers, the lightkeeper and his apprentice.That old lightkeeper hadn’t wanted to be a lightkeeper, everyone knew, he was dragged into the job out of familial duty rather than passion. As soon as he got that new apprentice, he sailed more and more, leaving for days at a time.One day, he simply didn’t come back.Everyone knew he didn’t take his apprentice with him sailing, but the young man was never seen again either.And yet, every night, the lantern turns on as it is supposed to.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	1. Locked from the Outside

It wasn’t too long ago that the lighthouse was occupied, and yet no one can remember the names of the two men living there. But there were two men, everyone remembers, the lightkeeper and his apprentice.

That old lightkeeper hadn’t wanted to be a lightkeeper, everyone knew, he was dragged into the job out of familial duty rather than passion. As soon as he got that new apprentice, he sailed more and more, leaving for days at a time.

One day, he simply didn’t come back.

Everyone knew he didn’t take his apprentice with him sailing, but the young man was never seen again either.

And yet, every night, the lantern turns on as it is supposed to.

* * *

The train arrives at about noon. Jon takes a moment to stretch his limbs before packing himself in a cab for the half-hour ride to the lighthouse.

The scenery is nice enough, though already starting to take a turn into bitterly cold. Part of the drive takes them along the seaside, listening and watching as waves crash hard against the craggy shore.

“I wouldn’t go swimming.” the cabbie looks at Jon out of the corner of his eye.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Jon says.

The sky is a stormy grey, which clashes with the little cabin the cab pulls up to. It’s more of a cottage, with white stone walls and dark wooden beams. Jon unloads his bags, just a briefcase and a backpack, and pays the cabbie before walking up the cobbled path. The garden and flowerbeds were obviously well cared for, now populated with winter ivy.

He knocks on the wooden door, then waits while he hears a commotion inside. After a moment, a woman answers the door. “Ah, Jonathan, yes?”

“Yes,” he says, “Sasha James?”

“You’re at the right place,” she smiles and pulls the door open wider. “Come on in, it’s starting to get a bit nippy out.”

“Thank you, Mrs. James,” he steps inside and hangs his coat on the hook by the door.

“No need to be so formal, just Sasha is fine,” she says and beckons him further into the house, “Lucky for you, I just put a kettle on. Would you like a cuppa while we talk about what brings you here?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Milk, sugar?”

“Just black is fine.”

“Alright,” Sasha waves at the room generally, “You sit down, I’ll be out in just a moment.”

Jon sits down on the couch, avoiding sitting on one of the needlepoint pillows. There was a coffee table in easy reach of the sofa, laden with books. Most of them were just popular books, nothing exceptionally interesting.

There were two windows on the far wall, framed by yellow curtains that were pulled aside. In the distance there was a large hill, with a tower sitting atop it. That would be the lighthouse, then.

“So, Jonathan,” Sasha comes back into the room, holding two mugs. She sets one of them down on the coffee table and sits in the rocking chair with the other one, “You mentioned doing research in your letter?”

“Yes,” Jon picks up his cup before he realizes how hot it is and puts it back down. “I research different supernatural sightings and phenomena. Right now I am working on putting together a book detailing various supernatural occurrences throughout the country.”

Sasha grins and takes a sip of her drink. Her drink is nearly all white. “You could just say you’re writing a ghost stories book.”

“I am not just writing a ghost stories book,” Jon gets defensive, “I am writing an account of actual supernatural happenings, not made up stories for clout or entertainment.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Sasha says, “I didn’t mean to offend you. I appreciate that you’re putting in the effort of checking for veracity. How did you hear about our lighthouse?” she took another sip of her drink while he answered.

“A colleague of mine told me about it, he’s from the area.” Jon finds his drink has cooled enough now. “I trust his judgement, so I decided to come check it out.”

“Oh, was it Tim Stoker?” Sasha asks. She’s smiling now.

“Yes, you know him?” Jon is mildly surprised.

“Yeah, he used to help me manage the garden,” Sasha says, “That’s good, it cuts out some of my screening questions. Tim’s a pretty good judge of character.”

“Screening questions?”

“Yeah, nothing major,” Sasha shakes her head, “I just like to make sure I have a good idea of who I’m letting in. For a while kids used to treat this place as a sort of test of wills, see if you can spend a night in the haunted lighthouse. One kid fell down the stairs and got a nasty head injury.”

Jon grimaces. “He’s just lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“That’s what I said,” Sasha makes a face, “But try explaining that to his angry mother. He wasn’t even a little kid, he was old enough to know better.” she rolls her eyes. “Anyways, now I like to pay better attention to who I let in so I don’t have to clean blood out of the carpeting.”

“Can I ask what sorts of things they were testing their wills against?” Jon asks.

“Typical ghost-y, old haunted building stuff,” Sasha shrugs, “Cold spots, creaky noises. The lamp turning on by itself is special, though.”

“They see the lamp turn itself on?”

“No, no one has,” Sasha says, “Though it definitely does. Most people usually chicken out before they reach the top of the stairs. Say they feel an overwhelming feeling of dread, and go numb in their extremities.”

“Could be carbon monoxide poisoning.” Jon concludes.

“Oh, don’t be boring.” Sasha says, “It’s the ghost!”

Jon sucks on his teeth. “Right.”

Sasha rolls her eyes, but lets it go. “Alright, you’ve passed my test, you’re boring enough not to seriously injure yourself. Come on, I’ll show you the grounds a bit.”

She leads him up the gravel path to the lighthouse, explaining the history of the building as she went. It was generic stuff that could probably apply to any lighthouse, but good enough information to know. Some of it was even new to him.

“Each lighthouse along the coast has to be reasonably distinct from the other lighthouses.” Sasha says, “So that ship captains can use them for navigation. Our lighthouse is recorded as being pure white, with the tower connected to the main house. There’s a balcony on the roof of the main building.”

That description is apt, as they approached the lighthouse. Calling it pure white may be a bit of a stretch; it had obviously started out as white, but was now discolored yellow with time. There was indeed a balcony on the roof of the main building, which also looked like it had lost the fight against nature.

“What about the old occupants?” he asks.

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Sasha shrugs. “No one really knows. You’ve heard the basic legend, right? The old lightkeeper sailed away and the apprentice was never seen again?”

“That’s how it was told to me, yes.”

“That’s exactly how I remember it.” she says.

“Wait, you were there?”

“It was only like seven years ago,” Sasha says, “I was assistant groundskeeper at the time. I remember that I interacted with the apprentice plenty. I think I enjoyed his company too, but that’s all I remember. Not even his name.”

“He just disappeared off the face of the earth?”

“Seems like it.” Sasha just looks at the trail ahead. “But he did it so gradually I never really noticed he was gone. Well, I don’t remember him enough to miss him.”

“That’s a bit sad.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

* * *

Sasha gives him the key, the only key, and tells him very firmly not to lose it. He returns to the tower near sunset. The door is old and heavy, but moves smoothly on its hinges when he pushes it open. When it slams behind him, it sounds very final.

The building is an eerie combination of abandoned and lived in. Everything was caked in layers and layers of dust, but if he didn’t know any better he’d expect someone to come around the corner and ask what he was doing there.

The main room was a combination sitting room and kitchen, with a fireplace and bare sofa in one corner, a bookshelf on the wall, and a stove in the corner. There was a dusty pile of wood next to the fireplace, and ashes still resting in it.

There was a small table at the end of the couch, and it had books piled atop it. They weren’t placed there artfully, or to make the table look less empty, instead it looked like someone had left them there when they stood up from reading.

Jon sets his things down on the floor, and spends a few moments punching the couch and pillows in an attempt to get the worst of the dust off of them. He opens the window in the hopes of letting the dust particles out, but the air is just as still and dead outside as it is inside.

There are two ways out of this room, a hallway with a couple of rooms off of it and a stairway going both up and down. He goes down the hallway first before investigating the other floors.

There are four rooms off the small hallway, two bedrooms, a washroom and a dry room for storing paper goods. He gives one of the bedrooms a similar treatment as the couch, beating the dust out of the sheets and pillows and opening a window. He’s not planning on sleeping, but he’d like to have the option.

The wash room is, according to Sasha, functional, which is a relief. The dry storage room is plenty dry, and full of bookcases overwhelmed with books. Some of them are, at a quick glance, log books required for lightkeepers to keep, while others of them are just books.

He wanders back into the kitchen, and something green catches his eye. He doesn’t know how he didn’t notice it before, but there’s a windowsill garden in the kitchen. From across the room he can identify rosemary, coriander and thyme, but there were much more than that.

He goes over to investigate and finds that all of the plants are labelled with little paper stakes in the soil. Somebody obviously spent quite a bit of time on the labels, doodled them in pretty script and drew pictures. There were eight different types of herbs.

That’s unusual for an abandoned building that no one had the key to.

“Hello?” he asks the house at large. It’s silly, because he just walked through basically the whole thing, but he could’ve sworn this wasn’t there before. “Is there anyone else here?”

Only the howl of a draft answers him.

So, that’s a thing then.

He checks down in the cellar first. It has two rooms, the first one used for general storage and full of non-perishable goods, the other one full of flammables, the oil needed to keep the lantern alight, wood and coal to keep the house warm. A normal enough cellar, so he goes to check the lamp.

He is embarrassingly winded by the time he reaches the top of the tower, but he reaches the top of the tower.

The lens on the lamp is well maintained and shiny, the floor seems stable enough. He peers into the mechanisms of the lighthouse, and they look good in his opinion as someone who has no clue how lighthouses work.

The view from the top is odd, though he really hasn’t been in a position so high up before, he may just not know what to look for. But he can barely see the groundskeeper’s house below, much less the city in the distance. It looked like everything was covered in a light dusting of fog.

He goes back downstairs and decides to eat a bit before sundown. He wants to see the lamp light itself, so he really should have brought his food up with him. Instead he will have to make the arduous trek up the tower a second time.

He checks the pantry in the kitchen, more out of curiosity than anything else, and finds it’s well stocked with preserves. He picks up one jar of something orange - peaches, the cursive handwriting on the lid tells him - and they look fine enough. He’s not brave enough to try to eat them, but when he tests the lids they still have a good seal.

He brought his own food, though, a few sandwiches and a pack of biscuits a lady was selling downtown. It would be enough to take him through the night and then some, as he had a habit of overpacking.

Then it is about a half hour until sunset; time for him to make the arduous climb once more. It seems that between his first venture up the spiral staircase and his second, the number of stairs has doubled.

Then, about halfway up, he feels a sense of doom creeping up his back, tickling the back of his neck. There is a presence behind him, something looking at him. There is something behind him, something filled to the brim with dread.

He turns around. There is no one behind him, and he nearly slipped on the metal stairs in his panic.

“Stupid,” he shakes his head and keeps walking, keeping one hand firmly on the handrail this time.

A few feet later it comes again, the feeling of something coming. This time he doesn’t turn to look, just powers through it and hopes his heart will either get over it or explode already.

A few steps later and he feels a hand on his shoulder. He whips around but, again, there was no one there. He touches his shoulder with his other hand, and there is definitely a cold spot where he felt the hand.

Then he steps onto the landing, and all the feelings disappear with an audible sigh. It’s not a sigh of relief, though, but a sigh of disappointment.

Well, whatever type of angry ghost that is, it will just have to wait. He sits underneath the window that is getting the most sun and pulls out his notebook to take notes on what just happened. Then, as it gets closer to sunset, he puts away his notebook and stares at the lamp. He wants to see it light itself.

He hears another puff of air like a sigh right at sunset. He assumes that means that the lamp is about to light itself, and stands up. Instead of a magical spark or a ghost, all he sees is a hand covering his eyes.

He yelps and pulls away, pushing the hand away from his face. It doesn’t work, whoever owns this hand clearly has muscle to him. There is a bright flash on the other side of the hand, then it pulls away.

The lamp is lit now.

He’s still alone in the lighthouse.

“Who’s there?” He called out into empty air. It echoed out the windows of the tower and bounced around the near barren landscape. “Quit hiding, I know you’re here, you just touched me!”

The sound didn’t reverberate, it just fell dead.

That’s it, Jon is leaving. He grabs his notebook and goes to the stairs, for a moment honestly considering sliding down them on his rear. No, if he’s going to be chased out of this building by a ghost, he’s at least going to leave with his dignity intact, dammit.

He doesn’t want to spend all night here, and especially not with a ghost or manifestation or whatever that can actually touch him. Sure, all it had done so far was to block his eyes from the bright flash of the lamp lighting, but it could be so much more. No, he’s not waiting around for it to decide to do worse.

He gets to the base of the stairs far quicker than was probably responsible for him to go, but all he cares about is that he got there. He barely hesitates when picking up his things, and grabs the doorknob.

And shakes it. And shakes it.

The door’s locked, of course it is. He searches the door for some way to unlock it, but there isn’t one. It’s one of those old doors that only locks from the outside, apparently.

But that can’t be it, either. According to the groundskeeper, there were only two keys to the lighthouse. One of them was taken by the old lightkeeper when he sailed off to who-knows-where, and the other one was in the care of the groundskeeper, and now Jon.

The groundskeeper who definitely had a name. She had a name earlier, what was it?

He shakes and shakes the doorknob, but to no avail. Then he starts pounding on the door, because surely someone would notice him, surely. The outside world had to know he was here, they had to hear him.

After a few minutes of shouting himself hoarse, he changes tactics to try and break the door down. He abandons this tactic rather quickly, as the door was made from high-quality, heavy wood, and he was made from academia.

He goes back to screaming and pounding on the door until he falls over and doesn’t get back up again.


	2. In the Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of the other books he’d sifted through had apparently fallen open when he placed it on the table. After he’s been reading for a few pages, he notices the pages of that book are turning as well.
> 
> It’s probably a draft, he figures. Old buildings, even old lighthouses full of dead, cold air, have drafts. Another page flips, then another, then another. It’s almost like there’s a ghost sitting next to him reading, too.
> 
> There’s a ghost sitting next to him and reading.

Jon wakes up in a bed. This fact is not immediately concerning to him. In fact, he’s usually pleasantly surprised when he wakes up on a bed rather than with his face pressed into a book.

Then he notices how much his throat and fists hurt, and he remembers the night before. Then it is immensely concerning that he is in a bed and not still crumpled on the floor before the door.

He keeps his eyes closed and his body still. Maybe it was a dream, though he really doesn’t think so. Maybe there is some other, completely benign, reason for him to be in this foreign bed. Maybe if he stays still he'll wake up and find himself back at home.

There are no other sounds in the room, so if nothing else he is alone. He shuts up the little voice in him that reminds how he’d thought he was alone in the tower too, before that hand covered his face. It doesn’t work, he still feels the oppressive emptiness around him.

He sits up. When he hears nothing but the blankets around him shifting, he opens his eyes.

He’s sitting in one of the bedrooms in the lighthouse, the one he’d dusted the evening before. The window is shut now, and blue sunlight lazily meanders through the thin white curtains. The mattress is firm, but not unpleasantly so.

To the right of him, there is a table. On that table, there is a cup of steaming tea.

Maybe somebody found him last night, and rather than take him somewhere else, just used one of the beds he was closest to. That makes sense, it certainly would be easier than trying to find some way to drag him into town.

He holds the tea to his face. The color is a bit paler than he’s used to, but it smells excellent. He drains the whole cup before he stands to investigate the matter further.

“Hello?” He calls as he goes into the hall, “Thank you for the tea, it was excellent.”

His bags, which had been dropped randomly when he collapsed, are now piled neatly on the couch. There is a kettle sitting on the stove in the kitchen, but it’s stone cold to the touch.

“Hello?” he looks around the room. It’s not a large room, there’s nowhere for anyone to be hiding.

He tries the door again. No dice, still stubbornly locked in place.

He goes down into the cellar to check, but doesn’t linger long. There isn’t anyone down there anyways, and it’s dark and creepy. He looks up the tower too, but doesn’t bother climbing to check.

He checks ‘his’ bedroom again and the other bedroom, and finds nothing. He goes into the dry storage room, and finds no people. He does, however, find bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling in various states of drying.

He stops in the loo and turns on the faucet. It starts, but what first comes out is a foul-smelling brown sludge. After a moment it changes to clear, cool water, but he waits a second later before splashing it onto his face.

So, either he is stuck in this building with someone very skilled at evasive maneuvers, or it is just him and the ghost.

Which begs the question of  _ what the hell _ did he just drink?

(It was really good, though. Whatever it was.)

He considers going back to banging on the door, but now that he’s slept and isn’t in quite as much of a panic-induced frenzy, he could realize how silly it was. 

Of course nobody opened the door for him then. He was in a lighthouse on the top of a hill with the closest building being the groundskeeper’s home at the base of the hill. Of course nobody could hear him, and it had looked like a storm was blowing in so of course no one would be out for a walk.

They would realize soon enough that he was in there, though. He knows there is someone he is supposed to return the key to. She’ll notice he hasn’t come to turn in the key and come looking for him. He just has to wait a bit for someone to notice.

He sits down on the couch. It’s threadbare, but sturdy enough beneath him. He looks through the pile of books on the table next to him, selects one, and starts to read.

One of the other books he’d sifted through had apparently fallen open when he placed it on the table. After he’s been reading for a few pages, he notices the pages of that book are turning as well.

It’s probably a draft, he figures. Old buildings, even old lighthouses full of dead, cold air, have drafts. Another page flips, then another, then another. It’s almost like there’s a ghost sitting next to him reading, too.

There’s a ghost sitting next to him and reading.

He stands up and goes to ‘his’ room and locks the door behind him. He sits on the bed and glares at the door for about ten minutes, then goes back to reading. Hopefully whoever or whatever this ghost is will accept that a closed and locked door means he does not want company.

He wishes he had three eyes, because he has three things to look at at once. The book, because he’s actually become somewhat invested in it, the pathway out the window to see if anyone comes for him, and the door.

The further he gets in his book, the less he cares about the door. He figures that the ghost has probably gotten bored and wandered off to do ghost-y things by now.

By the mid-afternoon, he’s stopped watching the window so closely. That wasn’t so much of a conscious decision so much as he got really invested in his book.

He leaves his room when the light outside his window grows dim as the sun sets. Once he’s broken out of the reading trance, he realizes that he hasn’t eaten at all that day, and he could really go for some food. 

He eats a bag of trailmix as a multi-meal, pours himself a glass of water from the sink. The first sip tastes a bit fowl, so he pours the rest into the kettle to boil it to be safe.

While the water boils, he wanders around the main room. It’s not super big, he learns, about fifteen paces across, ten paces wide. He has no clue how that would translate into normal measurements, but it meant he couldn’t pace super far.

After his water boils, he pours it out and lets it cool. While he waits, he thumbs through the books on the shelf, piling them based on which ones he wants to read. It’s not that he’s planning on staying here long term, just that he’s bored.

After he’s done eating, it’s too dark for him to read by the window again. He finds a candle in the kitchen and lights it. He sits down to read pressed up against the door to the outside so he can’t miss it when someone comes for him.

Jon wakes up in a bed again, sunlight coming in through the now drawn curtains. He looks to the bedside table, but this time there’s no drink waiting for him. His book is there, though, with a bookmark in what must be the last page he read.

He has more trail mix and boiled water for breakfast, and he digs out a change of clothes from his bag to wear. Soon he may have to use the bath, but he’s avoiding that for as long as possible. That would feel like resigning to his fate here.

He reads in the sitting room for the rest of the day. At about noon he has to switch from his current book to another book from his to-read pile. He goes to bed on his own time, this time. He doesn’t want the ghost to have any more opportunity to mess with him while he’s unconscious. He locks the door behind him.

He tries not to panic too hard. The city probably just has a rule how long to wait before looking for a missing person. That’s a thing in some places.

(Even though it should be obvious where he is.)

By the fifth day, he read four more books. The more notable thing to happen on that fifth day, was he finally became hungry enough to look in the kitchen’s cupboards again.

(He had run out of food a day and a half ago, but he was certain that the outside world would rescue him before he got that hungry.)

Most of the cupboards have dishes and such in them, some have dried foods and herbs in them. There is a jar of raisins, and that’s what he decides to eat. They smell fine, and taste like normal raisins.

He opens the first can at the end of the first week, a can of peaches. They’re sickly sweet, and any other time Jon would certainly pass them up for other food, but a small part of him is saying he needs to ration what he has. So he only eats one jar at a time, which means he has a day and a half of peaches.

By the middle of the second week, he has finished all the books in his ‘to-read’ pile, and begins working his way through the less desirable books. They’re dull, but his alternative options are to pace and panic and wait for people to save him. This is preferable.

He’s grumbling his way through the first of his less-preferred books when the second cup of tea appears. He didn’t hear anyone in the kitchen, but when he looks the kettle had indeed moved while he was absorbed in his book.

The cup isn’t anything special, but it is a welcome reprieve from this dull sludge of a book. It’s a white cup, with small leaves painted on it, paired with a matching saucer.

The liquid inside is probably tea, it smells like tea. The color was a touch lighter than he was used to. He holds it in both hands, it’s warm. Up close it smells even more like tea. Nothing bad happened to him the last time he drank the mystery tea, he decides, so it’s probably safe to drink this too.

Like that first cup of tea, it was delicious.

That becomes a daily occurrence. He comes out of his bedroom, sits in his spot on the couch and reads. Sometime throughout the day he’ll look up, either because he’s bored or because he thinks he hears something, and there’s a cup of tea waiting for him on the table. He drinks it, and it’s delicious, and it staves off some of the cold seeping into his bones.

By the end of the third week, he’s read all the books in the main sitting room, and has switched to reading books from the dry room. These books are different, more of them tend to be non-fiction. Almost all of them are annotated, with neat cursive handwriting in the margins.

By the end of the sixth week, he is completely out of books.

At the end of the sixth week, he accepts that nobody is coming for him.

That is when the cold sets into his bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your ghost friend just wants to be a pal :(

**Author's Note:**

> Wow! starting yet another multi-chaptered fic?  
> This was originally going to be something short written for fantasy week, then it got long.  
> Title and inspiration come from the song "Lighthouse" by The Hush Sound.  
> If you wanna chat, I'm storm-does-stuff on tumblr.


End file.
